Les Films de la Butte

In the 70s, actress Delphine Seyrig and director Carole Roussopoulos, both militant feminists, were the pioneers of video activism in France. They documented the demonstrations of French feminists and used the new technologies to counter the poor representation of women in the public media.

Five old friends decide to move in together as an alternative to living in a retirement home. Joining them is an ethnology student whose thesis is on the aging population.

It all begins with a childhood memory: that day when the father of the future filmmaker Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva forces him to listen to certain music that initially terrifies him; a distant echo from the past that leads him to follow the trail of his mysterious ancestor, the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), who claimed that his music was directly inspired by the gods.

Between segregation and cosmic revelation, The Magic City traces the birth of Sun Ra, where a city becomes myth and a man, a galaxy.